


Call Me Home

by hapakitsune



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-24 09:48:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4914814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hapakitsune/pseuds/hapakitsune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eduardo doesn’t see him at first; he’s staring at his phone with a slight frown on his face, mouth turned down. Mark draws up short to stare at him, wondering if he should say something or pretend he doesn’t recognize him, when Eduardo looks up and meets his gaze. </p><p>“Fuck,” Eduardo says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call Me Home

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this a while back as part of a twitter dare with buttcasino and finished it on the 5 year tsn-iversary while watching TSN how perfect. LMAO god it's been FIVE YEARS!!!! thanks to sketchingbirds for going through this!!! title is obviously a Mumford & Sons lyric because what else tbh

For his thirtieth birthday, Mark's sister organizes a surprise party despite his explicit instructions not to. It's not as large as he fears, mostly current co-workers – employees, if he's honest – and a few familiar faces. Dustin is there with his wife, Chris with his husband, and even Sean deigns to show up, though of course he's an hour late and he and Mark spend at least fifteen minutes arguing about Snapchat. Mark finds it all rather tiresome. Birthdays have never been his favorite holiday to celebrate. Pesach, Rosh Hashana, even Channukkah all have meaning to them, and in comparison the day he was born seems to hold little importance. But he has grown more tolerant of humoring his friends and family, and he lets them give toasts to him and directs them to give any gifts to charity instead of him.

Toward the end of the night, Chris and Dustin and Mark end up in one corner, Randi having given Mark a carefully curated photo album of photos from Harvard despite his insistence that he didn’t want gifts. Like any collection of old photographs, it prompts something like nostalgia for days when things were a little simpler, when their main concern in life was where Billy had slept the night before and if any of them knew where that smell was coming from. Chris is bent over the book, smiling at a photo of Dustin trying to fit as many Red Vines in his mouth as possible. His hair is shorter than Mark remembers, not boyishly long any more, and he isn’t as stiff, either. Marriage has suited him, as it suits Dustin, who keeps leaning behind Mark to yell stories to his wife Janika. 

“Hey,” Chris says suddenly. When Mark looks, Chris has paused at a photo toward the end of the book. In it, Chris has his arm around Mark’s shoulders, Dustin laughing off to the side. And to Mark’s other side, face slightly turned away from the camera, mouth opened as though he’s speaking, is Eduardo. 

He looks the same in the photo as he always does in Mark’s memory: hair slightly unruly despite his constant attempts to tame it into submission, suit jacket and trousers, open-collared shirt. Mark doesn’t remember this picture being taken. It looks like they’re somewhere on Harvard’s campus, but he doesn’t know where. It’s the only photo of Eduardo anywhere in the book, and Mark isn’t sure if he’s grateful for that. 

“God,” Chris says. “That was more than ten years ago now, do you realize that?”

“Is Wardo married?” Mark asks. The nickname trips down his tongue like it hasn’t been ten years and a six hundred million dollar lawsuit since the last time he’d called Eduardo that. Chris has the decency not to comment, though Mark sees his eyebrows twitch in surprise. 

“I don’t think so,” Chris says. Mark nods. His own chance at marriage had fallen apart rather spectacularly, as his relationships often seemed to. Now he’s finding himself settling comfortably into bachelordom. On occasion, someone will try to find him a date, and he’ll humor them by going to dinner or coffee or a movie. It never works out, which is something people will learn eventually. 

Dustin leans back to see what they’re looking at and chuckles. 

“Jeez,” he says. “We gotta put this away, it’s making me feel old.”

“I want to see,” Janika says, coming over to their side. She peers over Mark’s shoulder, her dark curls tickling his neck. “Is _that_ Eduardo? You never said he was handsome.”

“Handsome?” Dustin asks in disbelief. “Really?”

Chris shrugs, eyes flicking to Mark. “I always thought he was good-looking.”

Mark presses his lips tight and turns the page. “Does your husband know that?”

Chris laughs, eyes on the next photo of Mark and his sister posing with the ducklings in the Boston Public Garden. “I think he’d agree.”

The party winds down a little after midnight; most of them are well past their partying until dawn phase, except for Sean, of course, and there is the drive home to be considered. Chris and Dustin, as well as their spouses, take two of Mark’s guest rooms. Mark’s house is impractically large, purchased when he thought he would be getting married, and it’s pleasing to know that at least some of it is being used. His usual insomnia is quelled by the large amount of food and alcohol he had consumed, and he falls asleep easily, sprawled out over his bed. 

The morning is almost like Harvard again, except for the much nicer kitchen and the presence of Chris and Dustin’s spouses. Chris’s husband makes pancakes, which is somewhat richer than Mark’s usual breakfast of an orange and a glass of water, but it’s nice, sitting around Mark’s kitchen island and drinking expensive coffee from Brazil. The brand, Mark remembers suddenly, had been recommended to him by Eduardo years ago, back when Eduardo had gone on a passionate tirade against the coffee offered in the school cafeteria. 

“Mark,” Chris says, in the tone that means he’s said Mark’s name several times already. Mark looks up from his pancakes, prepared to invent an excuse for his inattentiveness, but Chris is smiling. Like he missed this too. “Dustin and I were saying our flights aren’t until tomorrow. Anything you want to do?”

Janika and Nick insist they can keep themselves occupied and send the three of them off for the day. For lack of any better ideas, they drive to San Francisco and wander the streets like tourists, aimless. There had been days like this in college, wandering through downtown Boston, or through Harvard Square, in and out of bookshops and high-class clothing stores. In a sunglasses store, Mark sees the flash of tan skin and an open collar in the mirror, and turns, startled; but it’s a real tourist, coming in complaining that his sunglasses have broken. 

“You seem quiet,” Dustin says late in the afternoon while they browse Amoeba Records. “I’m surprised you haven’t gone into your rant about hipsters and false authenticity yet.”

Mark, who _had_ been musing on the pointlessness of records in the modern age, glances up. “I can share, if you want.”

“No, no,” Dustin says hastily. From the other side of the rack, Chris snorts. “But is everything okay?”

Mark thinks about it even though he knows the answer is no. He could lie, but the annoying thing about having friends for a long time is that they learn how to read you. He could say no and not clarify; or he could say, as he does now, “I’m thinking about Wardo.”

Dustin stares at him, mouth slightly open, a record forgotten in his hands. “Um,” he says. “I thought – you are?”

Mark shrugs, determined not to be embarrassed. “I was just wondering what he’s doing now.”

“I think he’s back in New York,” Chris says, voice light, as though he’s trying hard to be casual. “Doing consulting.”

“Of course,” Mark says, which comes out sounding far snider than he had intended. Chris narrows his eyes, and Mark hastily drops the subject, not particularly eager for a round of _You could try to reach out to him, you know_ that applies to at least ten people in Mark’s acquaintance. He knows that; with some of them, like Erica, he’s tried. Erica had accepted his request after more than a year, and now they are grudging friends, the kind that leave bland birthday greetings every year and occasionally interact in the comments of someone else’s post. 

The last time he had seen Eduardo, it had been at Chris’s wedding, where they had steadfastly avoided each other. Eduardo had been alone; Mark had brought along Jackie, a programmer who had always gotten along with Chris and had family in New York she wanted to visit. Mark had considered saying something to Eduardo, but at the time he had still been annoyed by the long profile Eduardo had been given in _Time._ “The Exiled Founder,” the article had been titled. The writer had even compared him to Pete Best, as though it were remotely similar. 

Eduardo had not been kind in his answers as to why he was no long part of Facebook; he had, in fact, been harsh enough that even Chris had been angry with him for a few months. Facebook had just gone public at the time, so perhaps everything was feeling a bit fresh for Eduardo, who had gone to Singapore after graduating from Harvard as though he were trying to escape everything to do with his failings. Later, Eduardo had said a few conciliatory remarks in the other, inevitable reaction articles that cropped up after profiles like that, and eventually the story had died. But Mark remembered the one thing Eduardo had said, the one that made him furious: “I don’t think Mark even realizes how much it hurt me.”

And wasn’t that just like Eduardo, to play the martyr. He had always done that; twisted every situation so that he seemed the injured party, like with that stupid chicken article or his break-up with Christy. He was good it, brilliant, even, and when Mark had said as much to him during one of the long, seemingly endless depositions, Eduardo had gone pale and muttered something under his breath that Mark couldn’t hear.

“Speak up, Mr. Saverin,” Sy had said. Marilyn had shifted uncomfortably in her seat, eyes cutting to Mark as Eduardo shook his head, apologizing politely. Yet another point for Eduardo’s side. 

Mark knows what he’s like; he isn’t blind to the fact that he’s difficult and stubborn, though he thinks those qualities have been to his benefit over the years, and he’d have to be an idiot not to realize that he was a hard person to be friends with. He’s been lucky with Chris and Dustin, and he had been lucky with Eduardo too, lucky that Eduardo had fixed on him early in Mark’s freshman year and decided that they would be friends no matter what Mark said or did. To a point. 

“I have his number, if you want to call him,” Chris says. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Dustin says, frowning at Chris. 

“It’s been ten years,” Chris says. “Do you really think he’s still mad?”

“Did you _read_ that article?” Dustin shoots back. Mark tunes out their bickering and dismisses the vague notion he’d had of reconnecting with Eduardo. It _has_ been ten years, and Eduardo has shown no signs of wanting to talk to Mark. That’s fine. His silence answers that question Mark has had since that article came out. It would have been – maybe not nice, but something. 

 

If the theory of infinite universes holds, there’s a universe out there where Mark and Eduardo are still friends. In that universe, maybe Mark relented and told Eduardo not to sign that contract, or maybe Eduardo didn’t freeze the accounts, or maybe Mark remembered to pick Eduardo up at the airport, or maybe Eduardo had just pulled his head out of his ass and come to California with them instead of wasting his time in New York. Maybe there’s a universe where Facebook failed but Eduardo and Mark stayed best friends. Where they moved onto the next idea, together. 

If the theory of infinite universes holds, then there’s also a universe out there where Eduardo didn’t approach Mark at that AEPi party, one where they never met at all. But Mark doesn’t like to consider that too often. 

 

He has to go to Boston in June, which is one of the worst times to be there. It’s hot and humid and full of tourists and memories, and Mark is there for a wedding, which makes it worse. He shakes hands and says hi and wishes he had brought a date because even though he’s gotten better at this, he still fucking hates it. If he had his way, he would just give his gift and leave, but, as he is so often reminded, there’s more to being a friend than that. 

The irony of the whole weekend is that he actually enjoys the wedding, because it’s small and mostly people he knows, even if he isn’t friends with all of them. He’s about ready to be pleased, smug in the fact that he had managed to get through the trip without any help – take _that_ , Randi – when, as he’s walking down Boylston back to his hotel, he runs into Eduardo. 

Eduardo doesn’t see him at first; he’s staring at his phone with a slight frown on his face, mouth turned down. His hair is shorter than Mark remembers, and he for once isn’t wearing black, is in fact wearing a cream-colored button down and khakis. Mark draws up short to stare at him, wondering if he should say something or pretend he doesn’t recognize him, when Eduardo looks up and meets his gaze. 

“Fuck,” Eduardo says. 

“Hello to you too,” Mark says, scowling instinctively. 

“I – hi, Mark,” Eduardo says, putting his phone in his pocket. He reaches up to smooth back his hair, then seems to realize that it’s too short to do much smoothing and drops his hand again. “I didn’t know you were in Boston.”

“Wedding,” Mark says, shrugging. “What’s your excuse?”

“Business.” Eduardo tries to step around him. “So I should be going –”

“Want to get a drink?” Mark asks on a whim. He expects Eduardo to say no; he would say no, probably, if Eduardo asked him, but he’s already a little tipsy from the wedding reception and the worst Eduardo can do is tell him to fuck off, which he’s already done, extensively. So it can’t get much worse. 

Eduardo pauses, gaze turning calculating. “Are you buying?”

“Sure,” Mark says. “Why not.”

“Fine,” Eduardo says, startling Mark so much that he has to take a moment to digest that word and what it means. Eduardo starts to look uncomfortable, opening his mouth to speak. 

“I know a place,” Mark says, to head off the change of mind or whatever self-correcting Eduardo had been about to say. 

The tiny bar he picks is around the corner and cash only; Eduardo probably hasn’t been in one of those since college. He has always been aspirational in a way Mark isn’t, looking for status rather than proving his value. Mark still drinks shitty beer and buys the same kind of hoodie from Old Navy. Eduardo probably drinks microbrews and shops at – Mark doesn’t even know. Banana Republic?

They don’t talk until they have their drinks, and even then it takes Eduardo half his beer to finally look Mark in the eye and say, “Who’s wedding was it?”

“Steve,” Mark says. “The guy from down the hall in Kirkland.”

Eduardo squints thoughtfully. “The one who ran naked through the hall.”

Mark snorts and shakes his head at the memory. “Yeah.”

“Huh.” Eduardo swirls his beer around his glass, letting the liquid foam up. “And Chris and Dustin are both married, and Billy’s engaged.”

“What’s your point?” 

Eduardo shrugs and lifts his glass. “I don’t really have one.”

They lapse back into silence. Mark watches the Red Sox game on the television over Eduardo’s shoulder. If Dustin were here, he’d be talking about batting averages and on-base percentages. Eduardo would get into it, too; he’d always liked probabilities. What are the odds, Mark thinks, what are the odds of them running into each other? What possibilities did Eduardo calculate as they stood there, Mark’s offer of a drink hanging in the air between them? 

Mark shifts his attention back to Eduardo, who is picking apart his napkin. Eduardo is a mysterious creature to Mark, someone who loves rationality and reason, but always seems to be led by his heart. And his instincts are good, so it works. Not always, but usually. He realizes he’s been staring at Eduardo’s hands for a long time and finishes his beer instead of saying something weird like _I miss you_.

They order another round, and by the time Mark is halfway through, he’s ready to ask, “Why did you say yes?” 

“To come here?” At Mark’s nod, Eduardo shrugs, rolling the bottom of his glass along the table. “I was curious what you would say,” he said. “And I was going to drink anyway.”

“So you decided to spend my money,” Mark says. 

“Yeah,” Eduardo says. “Seemed fair to me.” He smiles thinly. 

Mark leans back and considers Eduardo for a moment. “What would you have done if you were me?”

Eduardo doesn’t bother pretending he doesn’t understand. “I don’t know,” he says. “I used to think about that a lot. That I’d have been better than you, that I would have told you what I needed and convinced you to see it my way. But then I wonder if I’m kidding myself. It doesn’t pay to be kind.”

“Do you think you’ll forgive me?” Mark finds himself asking. He blames the alcohol, and the sour note in his stomach. 

“No,” Eduardo says. “You don’t need me to.” 

“Are you sure about that?” Mark asks. 

“You’ve never asked for my forgiveness,” Eduardo says. “So, yeah. Pretty sure.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad about it.” Mark picks up his glass and pretends he’s examining the lettering around the side. He watches Eduardo through the glass instead, his features distorted slightly. “We all make mistakes when we’re twenty.”

“You were my best friend,” Eduardo says. “I _trusted_ you. And you took that and you – jesus, Mark. I thought I meant something to you.” 

“It did.” Mark clenches his jaw and corrects himself, “It does.” 

“You have to forgive me for not feeling that way.” Eduardo rubs his forehead. “God, why did I think this was a good idea?”

“Curiosity, remember?” Mark puts his glass down. “Wardo, I’m sorry.”

Eduardo doesn’t move, head still in his hands. After a long, vast silence, he looks up. He’s almost smiling. “You know,” he says, “that’s the first time you’ve ever said that to me.” 

Mark bites the inside of his cheek. “Want to get another round?” he asks. Eduardo, after a moment, nods. 

 

They get truly, spectacularly drunk. By the time they leave the bar and head back down in the direction of their hotels, Eduardo is leaning on Mark heavily and they’re talking about – nothing. At some point they had been talking about the Red Sox, but now Eduardo is ruminating on the freak snowstorms of the last winter and what it means for the future. Mark considers himself a smart person, but when Eduardo goes on his meteorology tangents, he can’t really follow it. Or maybe it’s that he doesn’t care to.

The first time Eduardo and Mark got drunk together was also the first night they met at an AEPi party. Eduardo walked across the party without a trace of self-consciousness or shyness and introduced himself, saying, “I’m Eduardo, you’re Mark Zuckerberg, aren’t you?” It was the first time that had happened to Mark. He’s never told Eduardo, but he had been so fucking thrilled by it that he had forgotten his usual awkwardness and gotten lost in conversation about Synapse. Later, they had stumbled back across campus together, Eduardo’s arm around Mark’s shoulders, and they had made a pact to have sex in Widener library before they graduated, which, as far as Mark knew, neither of them had actually done. 

It was the first time Mark had ever had a best friend. 

“Where are you staying?” Mark asks Eduardo when they get to Mark’s hotel. “Wardo. Do I need to call you a cab?”

“I’m staying – shit.” Eduardo pats his pockets. “Somewhere downtown.”

Mark glances at his phone and sees it’s past midnight. “I have two beds in my room,” he says. “You think you’ll remember in the morning?”

“I can call my assistant in the morning if I don’t remember,” Eduardo says. He grins at Mark, unfettered, and Mark’s stomach lurches uncomfortably. “Almost like old times, isn’t it?”

“Except for you having an assistant,” Mark says.

Eduardo manages to get his pants off before he crashes out on the spare bed. Mark takes a shower, stands under the spray until he feels less dizzy, and stumbles into his bed. Eduardo is snoring quietly. For a moment, Mark is back in his dorm at Kirkland, Eduardo crashed out on the couch. It happened often enough, Eduardo hanging out while he studied and Mark coded before he fell asleep, face pressed into his textbook. Eduardo said once his room was too quiet. Mark never really understood that. 

The room feels like it’s spinning. Mark blinks up at the dark ceiling, eyes slowly adjusting. This, he realizes, is the first time he’s slept in the same room as someone since he broke up with his fiancée. 

Eduardo snuffles loudly and shifts. Mark looks over and studies the dim outline of Eduardo’s sleeping form. Twelve years they’ve known each other. More than half of that they’ve spent avoiding each other as much as possible. God, sometimes – 

“Wardo?” he asks quietly. 

Eduardo doesn’t stir. 

 

Mark wakes with a pounding headache and an incredibly dry mouth. He gets himself water from the sink and ice from the machine down the hall, and when he gets back, Eduardo is awake. He looks like an absolute mess. Mark offers him a glass of water in greeting. 

“Thanks,” Eduardo says. He drains his glass in one gulp and sets it down on the bedside table. “Shit, was I that drunk last night?”

“I guess you figured that I was buying,” Mark says, a weak attempt at a joke. Eduardo makes a face. “Wardo – I meant it.”

“Meant what?”

“That I’m sorry.” Mark sits down on his bed and looks down at the glass in his hands. “I handled it poorly. I handled everything – I’m sorry, is the point. You deserved better than that. You believed in me, and in Facebook, and I didn’t appreciate that enough. I’m sorry.”

Eduardo heaves a great sigh. “I’m not exactly guiltless,” he says. “I fucked up too. But – apology accepted, Mark.”

“It was supposed to be us,” Mark said quietly. “This was our thing and we fucked it up, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, we’re pretty good at that.” Eduardo smiles wryly. “I gotta get back to my hotel. I’m flying to London tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Mark gets up and offers his hand. Eduardo looks at him skeptically, then takes it. “I’ll walk you down.”

They go down to the lobby to hail Eduardo a cab. He’s standing with his back to Mark, talking to the concierge, and Mark – 

When he thinks about Eduardo these days, he tends to forget about the good stuff. He doesn’t remember things like the time they met, or the time they pranked Dustin with shaving cream in his shoes, or Eduardo falling asleep on his shoulder on the T on the way back from a Red Sox game. 

What he remembers is Eduardo walking away, dressed all in black, flanked by Facebook’s security officers. He remembers thinking, _I shouldn’t have done this_ , remembers Dustin looking at him with anger and fear and sadness in his eyes, remembers that his hands were sweating and he felt like throwing up. He remembers that he did throw up later, after Sean and everyone else had left for the party. He remembers that he hadn’t said anything to stop it, or make Eduardo understand. He had been hurt, and young, and so fucking stupid. He’s good at that. 

“Wardo,” he says abruptly. Eduardo turns, eyebrows quirked up. “Wanna get lunch?” 

“Lunch?”

“North End,” he suggests. “We can get good pizza. I bet it’s better than what they have in Singapore.”

“Probably,” Eduardo says. “Mark –”

“Please,” Mark says. He’s thirty years old, and he can admit to himself that he’s fucking missed Eduardo. They had been best friends. 

Eduardo looks down at himself. “I still have to shower and get changed.”

“I’ll come with you,” Mark says. 

Eduardo laughs and shakes his head. “Mark –” Then he looks at Mark, really _looks_ in that way he used to when Mark was upset. He was always better than anyone else at noticing that. “Okay,” he says. “But you’re paying.”

“That’s fine,” Mark says, and when a cab pulls up to the curb, he gets in beside Eduardo. 

At his hotel, Eduardo showers and changes into jeans and a casual dress shirt. He looks good, and he catches Mark looking as he’s buttoning up. 

“What?” he asks. 

“You look good,” Mark says, shrugging. “We’re just going out to lunch, you don’t have to get dressed up for me.”

“Don’t I?” Eduardo asks. He drops his hands and regards Mark steadily. “I know you’re single right now.”

“How do you know that?” 

“Chris.”

“Is that relevant?”

“Could be,” Eduardo says. “Do you remember the first night we met? When I walked across the room to say hello? Out of everyone in the room, I picked you.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I picked you.” Eduardo steps closer to Mark, close enough that Mark can smell his cologne. “You never thought about that, did you?”

“I guess I didn’t,” Mark says after a beat. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you single?”

Eduardo smiles slowly. “I am.” He holds out his hand. “Let’s start over. I’m Eduardo Saverin. Nice to meet you.”

Mark looks at his hand, at the delicate knuckles and the heavy gold ring he still wears. “I’m Mark Zuckerberg,” he says. He shakes Eduardo’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Let’s go get lunch,” Eduardo says. He’s still smiling; it’s weird. 

“You know this isn’t – I wasn’t trying to, you know,” Mark says, following Eduardo from the room. “This wasn’t what I was thinking when I asked you for drinks yesterday.”

“Me neither,” Eduardo says. “But, fuck, Mark. We kind of crashed and burned at being friends, didn’t we? Might as well try something new, if we’re going to try something at all.”

“That makes no sense,” Mark says. 

“Okay, well, look at it this way.” Eduardo stops and turns to face him. “I’m single, thirty-one years old, and I’d like to go out with you. Get to know you. Who you are now, not who you were ten years ago, because that’s – it isn’t as relevant, is it?”

“How can it not be?” 

“Because it’s been ten years,” Eduardo says, “and in that time we’ve both changed. We’re never going to get rid of the past, Mark, and I’m not saying we should, but you know what? I had fun last night. And I’m tired of hating you.”

“So you’re taking me out on a date,” Mark says. 

“Well, you’re paying, so I think you’re taking _me_ out on a date,” Eduardo says. “Unless, you know. You’ve changed your mind now.”

Mark looks up at Eduardo and thinks, _I still don’t understand you at all_. No one has ever confused him as much as Eduardo. He’s never craved anyone’s attention or time as much, or needed their respect the way he needed Eduardo’s. Not even Sean’s. 

“Kiss me,” he says, crossing his arms. “No point if that doesn’t work.”

Eduardo stares at him, and Mark wonders, momentarily, if this was all some weird power play on Eduardo’s part. He never used to play mind games like that, but then, it _has_ been a long time since they’ve seen each other. Then Eduardo’s gaze drops to his mouth, flicks up to his eyes, and Mark _knows_ that isn’t faked. He’s seen that look on Eduardo’s face before. 

“Wardo,” he says, starting to reach out, and Eduardo makes a soft noise at the back of his throat before pulling Mark to him. 

Mark has to go on his toes, holding onto Eduardo’s shoulders for support as Eduardo kisses him, deeply and desperately. Mark feels as though the breath has been snatched from his lungs, like his world has been turned on his axis, and he wonders if there’s a world out there where Eduardo had made his intentions clear from the start, or where Mark had picked up on them, or where they hadn’t wasted so much fucking _time_. 

“We could hurt each other,” Eduardo says when he pulls back. He rests his forehead against Mark’s. “Fuck, Mark, we’re so good at that.”

“Yeah,” Mark says. “But we’re older and smarter now.”

“Or older, at least.” Eduardo kisses Mark again, a light brush of his lips. “This is really stupid.”

“Probably,” Mark agrees. He’s smiling; he can feel it. Eduardo lifts his hand and presses his thumb to Mark’s dimple, a wondering expression on his face. “Can you imagine what Dustin will say?”

“I definitely can’t,” Eduardo says. “Take me to lunch, Mark.”

Mark pretends to consider, watching as Eduardo dissolves into slow laughter, and when Eduardo is giggling, pressing his hands to his cheeks, he kisses Eduardo’s smiling mouth and says, “Okay,” against his lips.


End file.
